The Aftermath in Bozeman: I Can Smell Main Street

By Lucia Stewart, 3-06-09

I left the house on Thursday morning in Bozeman to walk a few blocks downtown for the usual errands: meetings, bank, post office, coffee. What I found was my community has been ripped open — literally.

I live nine blocks from the site of the explosion. At 8:12am, it sounded and felt like a dump truck had rammed my house. I ran out of my bedroom naked and then frantically checked out all my windows and thought, That was strange. Didn’t feel quite like an earthquake but it sure had that kind of sudden earth-shaking intensity.

My friend Ron told me he thought the big old tree in his backyard had fallen on the house. My friend Sara told me her bedside candles had fallen over. I can only wait for the stories we tell for years to come, “What were you doing when Main Street exploded?”

Not one story surprised me yesterday as I walked on broken glass blocks from the explosion site. I chatted with the gentlemen boarding up the old Kenyon Noble building’s shattered windows. He told me building blew at “least 200-feet UP into the air when she went.”

I turned to watch the billowing, brown and black smoke and debris rise as it mixed with falling snow. I believed him. I looked farther down Mendenhall. Windows on Willson were being boarded up, too — almost 5 blocks from the explosion site. I was later told cinder blocks were found more than two blocks away.

“It literally looks like a bomb went off downtown,” said Assistant City Manager Chuck Winn when asked to describe the scene.

It happened so early in the morning that luckily, many shops had not opened and the streets were quiet. People simply going to work stopped in their tracks.

Now, Main Street is closed. No Access. Zero.

Everyone who was downtown yesterday morning wandered, not knowing what to do. Our community was threatened, and no one understood what happened, let alone what to do next.

We all feel the loss of solid ground in our “personal” lives at some point, but yesterday, I watched it happen to our entire community. Main Street, the heart of the Bozeman, was ripped open in a blast that sent powerful shock waves more than a half mile. But, the explosion was also felt thousands of miles away by all who have a sense of place in those street blocks.

Twitter, Facebook and the Web pages of local news organizations, The Bozeman Chronicle, KBZK and New West Bozeman lit up with comments from people across the country, lamenting the loss and offering help.

Twitter, in particular (see all the posts here: #bozexplode) became a clearing house for information as several users kept thousands of people informed of what was happening in real time, sharing critical news, what it looked like and how to get, or offer help.

Once the initial shock had abated, businesses on and near Main Street started boarding up windows, hanging signs that read things like this: “We are closed today due to the unfortunate events. We know you understand.”

I watched a few folks stand on a Mendenhall Street corner, turn from the billowing smoke to start walking away and say “Who’s our insurance agency?”

The Leaf & Bean and Wild Joe’s became the gathering grounds for the community, and the only places open on the west end of Main Street. Oh yeah, and the Tobacco shop Poor Richards and corner watering hole, the Cannery. Of course.

As I walked to the new City Hall, or the old library, I could see flames reflecting through jagged shards of glass hanging in the windows of vacant storefront on Black and Mendenhall. Across the street, the roof of brick law offices sagged from to the impact of falling debris and shockwaves.

People on Facebook are joking its our own mini Ground Zero.

“When we say gone, we mean gone,” Gov. Brian Schweitzer said at the afternoon press conference, in regards to what remained of this quarter block of Main Street.

As I sat listening at the press conference, I turned to gaze out the shattered window of the City Hall building, onto the now grey puffs of smoke from the explosion site just one block away. Roof shingles and blackened material hung from the leafless trees.

Our Main Street is not going to recover quickly, I thought. There is more damage then we can fathom.

But damage or not, now is when downtown is going to need our patronage the most.

I watched a very concerned group of Main Street business owners as they came to grips with the fact that the business of our Main Street would be decimated for a few days, if not longer. Car traffic may not resume for quite a few days. Foot traffic, though, they hope to open this weekend.

With the added stress of the current economy, business owners are feeling a their loss particularly hard right now. Not to mention the damaged merchandise and shattered storefronts.

Our Main Streets that we love are dying as it is. How many storefronts are boarded up in your town? I don’t want to see anymore than I see right now, in anyone’s town.

I’m intrigued to see the next few days and coming weeks and months. I hope the community of Bozeman comes together to revive our Main Street after an incident of this magnitude, that our community be its own helping hand. And already, my hopes are being realized.

Bozeman awoke this morning still, white and blissfully snow-laden after some long-awaited 16-inches overnight. Bozeman, like me, likely slept that night with a sigh in its heart, truly understanding that a moment can change everything, and feeling more compassion for our community.